dear small boys,
i am writing this to you now although you are not yet here. well, maybe by the time i get it written you will be. that’s okay. you’ll be very busy at first and will need lots of rest so i’m not expecting you to read this right away. first off, welcome. there are plenty of folks who are glad you're here right along with me.
i figured folks new in town might need some warm duds so i’m sending you some things i made. i wasn’t sure about your favorite colors and your mom was a lot less help than i thought she’d be on that account, so i winged it. there’s a box on the way with some little brown hats sort of like acorn caps. at least, that’s what i think when i look at them. your mom mentioned you like monkeys and i suppose they look a little like monkeys, too. i think if you make silly monkey sounds while you wear them, that would be pretty funny and nobody will tell you not to.
there’s a pair of pants for each of you. they’re sort of like sweat pants or pajama pants, nothing fancy. just good for lounging around. for the first few months, if anyone tells you to do anything other than lounge around, tell them no. if they bug you about it, send them to me.
your mom asked about some legwarmerish things and i want you to know it was her idea for you to look like flashdance and fame, not mine. but i made some anyway and i have to say they were a hoot to make. still, you’d think a woman with such particular ideas about legwarmers would know the favorite colors of her babies. she does have a lot on her mind right now, though, and i suppose we will all cut her a little slack.
there’s some other stuff i want to tell you, some about the greater syracuse area and some about those parents of yours. let’s start with syracuse. as far as i know, i’m the only non-native who gets homesick for the place. this is because other people are fools. there is plenty there to love no matter what you hear from grumblers. you have the oldest dead lake in north america (possibly full of mutant carp) right by the mall and then two meromictic lakes right next to each other. if you walk along the trail around that big one to where there are pine trees and then look down into the water, you will see a blue so far beyond words you will only be able to stare at it. those lakes are so content they don’t ever turn over. you’ll learn about that later in science. the erie canal comes through that way and you can walk along the towpath in some places. there are songs to sing when you do that and at least once you should pretend to be a mule. clop clop clop. there are drumlins, long hills all going the same direction, gouged out by the fingers of real, live glaciers and good for sledding and rolling down. out past town a little is a waterfall that’s like a glittering ribbon twisting in the wind. there is a water tower to climb when you’re older, but don’t tell your parents i told you about it. over by the campus is a park full of roses and a big stone amphitheater. you will want to stand on the stage there and yell really loud. you can ride an old erie lackawanna railroad car if you want and there are plenty of lilacs around. in fact, syracuse (maybe because of the winter thing there) goes all out in spring and you might get a little nervous at the shift in color from whitish gray and grayish white to all the colors. every single inch of ground blooms in spring.
but i think your parents are what you’ll love most about that place. they are smart and funny and they have some animal brothers and sisters for you to play with because they know what’s what. i know at first when you come out you’ll be a little bit scared. you’ve been in the quiet and in the dark for a long time and it will be noisy and bright and probably a little cold (remember those hats), but you will not feel that way for long. i am sure of that. you know, back when i was a lot like you will be when you first get out, not very good at dressing myself, prone to fits of crying, unable to communicate clearly and generally helpless, i lived with them. that’s right. your parents. back when they were way too young to have any small children yet they had me around. we had some roses and peonies in the yard, a fire in the fireplace and a big round chair like a nest. and they took very good care of me, made me feel safe and loved and even like i was good at telling jokes. okay, maybe that last one is an imagined thing on my part. i’m not such a good joke teller, really. but what i’m trying to tell you is that you will love them so much you will not know what to do sometimes. you will. i know it. because they have had practice keeping an eye on wildness. they are already good at this. you’ve got nothing to worry about.
much love to you both,
me
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
for uncle wiggily
if you haven't spent any time with any of j.d. salinger's characters, the people and what they say and do in his books, or if it has been a long while since you met holden maybe, go out and get yourself a book or two. read. be glad you did.
mrs. walther gave us all a list in our english class. this was 1985, maybe. titles. authors. names we'd heard, some of them, but not many we'd really read. they were books, she told us, that we owed it to ourselves to read. she used the word obligation. and i read. catcher in the rye. and i did what plenty of teenagers do when they read it. i fell in love. with holden. with the words. with the prettiness and ugliness. i swooned.
and then a few years later a man named art stood in front of my very first college class and rambled off a new list. new names. ray carver. flannery o'connor. john cheever. robert coover. eudora welty. and then one i knew. j.d. salinger. not a novel, though. short stories. and i fell in love. with the lostness. the words. i wanted to break into the words on the page and rescue just about all of those people.
and all those folks simmer there in words that are, no matter what you like to read, just some mighty fine words, the way he puts them on the page. none of them fancy sitting there alone, but you just pick a page and say a line or two out into the world and you will shake your head and smile at the way the sound of them hangs in the air.
surely there is plenty to say about the man who wrote them, but i will leave most of that to others. i am sure they will say much. i can't say what drove him to bring us these few words or what made him turn away and keep all the rest of his words to himself. but i surely do thank him for sharing what he felt he could.
mrs. walther gave us all a list in our english class. this was 1985, maybe. titles. authors. names we'd heard, some of them, but not many we'd really read. they were books, she told us, that we owed it to ourselves to read. she used the word obligation. and i read. catcher in the rye. and i did what plenty of teenagers do when they read it. i fell in love. with holden. with the words. with the prettiness and ugliness. i swooned.
and then a few years later a man named art stood in front of my very first college class and rambled off a new list. new names. ray carver. flannery o'connor. john cheever. robert coover. eudora welty. and then one i knew. j.d. salinger. not a novel, though. short stories. and i fell in love. with the lostness. the words. i wanted to break into the words on the page and rescue just about all of those people.
and all those folks simmer there in words that are, no matter what you like to read, just some mighty fine words, the way he puts them on the page. none of them fancy sitting there alone, but you just pick a page and say a line or two out into the world and you will shake your head and smile at the way the sound of them hangs in the air.
surely there is plenty to say about the man who wrote them, but i will leave most of that to others. i am sure they will say much. i can't say what drove him to bring us these few words or what made him turn away and keep all the rest of his words to himself. but i surely do thank him for sharing what he felt he could.
insides go out, part 3
here are some things you should know. you can put some cooked white rice into a pan with fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth and you can heat it up but it will not become food. three bananas does not get you any closer, really, to having protein in your belly than no bananas. dry toast is an abomination. i can feel my eyes tearing up as i write the words dry toast. also, the fancy medication i take to keep my brain where it is supposed to be requires a great deal of protein as a cushion inside. if i take it without enough protein, well, i will recreate the morning's swirling and exploding, but will add to it severe shaking, dizziness, nausea and stabbing pains that make menstrual cramps look like pretty candy. this lovely medication is a salt, and requires me to keep a normal salt intake if i want to keep my hands and feet and, eventually, all of me, from swelling up like that kid in the chocolate factory.
i spend the early part of the day on the couch, languishing. it is not the blandness that causes suffering. it is the lack of substance. i determine to look up this stupid brat diet as soon as i have strength enough to sit back up. i look over at my hand on the pillow beside me. it is swollen and bloated already. it looks like a balloon.
for some folks being sick is accompanied by a semi-delusional state. you know, where you can't make yourself make sense and everything is just disagreeable. so i am midway through my day of swirling stomach, food misery and confusion when i go into the bathroom to wash my hands. and i stare at the sink. and my brain scrambles around to push the words into the right order so i can think and when it does my brain thinks, "how on earth did i crap in the sink?" because the sink is filled nearly to the top with, well, some very ugly substance. blackish greenish slushy water. and i am convinced that somehow i had managed this in my delirium. then i hear a bang from upstairs. and another. i grab the sweetie's toothbrush from the counter and grab the bath mat and step back out of the room just as the swampy water spills out over the lip of the sink and waterfalls all over the pink bathroom floor. and then it stops. and then bang. and black water pours over the edge of the sink again. and i smile because it was not me and no matter how worried a person might be about sewage or filth or whatever spilling out all over the floor, knowing that you did not crap in your own sink is such a relief, none of the rest of that matters.
i run up to the upstairs apartment and find our neighbor and the maintenance guy working on a clog in that sink. i mention the waterfall in my own apartment and eyes get wide. our maintenance guy comes down and says a lot of very loud and very worried words, but reassures me that this hideous water at least didn't come from the toilet. just from a fifty year old sink pipe. he calls the plumber and the two of them spend a great deal of time banging and running down to the basement and yelling back and forth between floors. i tell them i'll do the cleaning up because, well, although our maintenance guy is good at building things, i suspect his bathroom looks like mine did when i was in college.
there is no food anywhere inside me but i figure that means there's no way any food could try to escape so i put on my hoodie (no mirrored glasses) and head out into the world to get more paper towels (we used a whole roll and two bath towels to mop up some of the water in the bathroom). against my better judgement, i buy a bleach cleaner. i pick up guthrie from daycare and as we are walking home, i begin to shake. i can barely lift my legs to walk. my stomach begins to cramp because there are no things in there to keep its walls from clanging into each other. i try to get guthrie to carry me home but he just looks blankly and trots ahead.
i get home and start the oven. i go to the opposite end of the aparment and spray the bleach cleaner all over the sink. i open the window. i begin to scrub. the world rocks back and forth, gently and everything smells like cool earth and swimming pool. i go back to the kitchen and get the whole grain bread ready to go in the oven. dry toast. mmmmm. i realize i can smell swimming pool in the kitchen. i open a window. i can taste swimming pool. i open the living room window and the bedroom window. wide. it is 34 degrees and the aparmtent smells like bleach and dry toast. i go back to the bathroom to scrub the walls (yes, the walls are covered with splatters of chocolaty dirtwater) but the dizziness is immediate and the bleach smell has a painful edge to it. no longer swimming pool. i think gas mask. the sweetie is working late and i wonder whether chlorine gas is heavy or light. probably heavy since it was used in battle. i pick up guthrie, sit back down. too dizzy to lift a small dog. i sit in the kitchen. toast is ready. i stare at it. it even looks cruel. i hate it. i decide to put a little olive oil on it and some cinnamon. i drizzle the oil, greeny yellow, onto the miserable toast and search for cinnamon. nigerian cayenne. nutmeg. coriander. cumin. chili powder. onion powder. ginger. sesame seeds. peppermint oil. no cinnamon. i am on the life raft. i see the ship, see its searchlight. i wave my hand. it keeps steaming past. misses me entirely. no cinnamon. i smash a whole banana onto the two pieces of olive oiled toast and sit down. it is beautiful. it is glorious. my bruised, aching stomach sings softly.
i spend the early part of the day on the couch, languishing. it is not the blandness that causes suffering. it is the lack of substance. i determine to look up this stupid brat diet as soon as i have strength enough to sit back up. i look over at my hand on the pillow beside me. it is swollen and bloated already. it looks like a balloon.
for some folks being sick is accompanied by a semi-delusional state. you know, where you can't make yourself make sense and everything is just disagreeable. so i am midway through my day of swirling stomach, food misery and confusion when i go into the bathroom to wash my hands. and i stare at the sink. and my brain scrambles around to push the words into the right order so i can think and when it does my brain thinks, "how on earth did i crap in the sink?" because the sink is filled nearly to the top with, well, some very ugly substance. blackish greenish slushy water. and i am convinced that somehow i had managed this in my delirium. then i hear a bang from upstairs. and another. i grab the sweetie's toothbrush from the counter and grab the bath mat and step back out of the room just as the swampy water spills out over the lip of the sink and waterfalls all over the pink bathroom floor. and then it stops. and then bang. and black water pours over the edge of the sink again. and i smile because it was not me and no matter how worried a person might be about sewage or filth or whatever spilling out all over the floor, knowing that you did not crap in your own sink is such a relief, none of the rest of that matters.
i run up to the upstairs apartment and find our neighbor and the maintenance guy working on a clog in that sink. i mention the waterfall in my own apartment and eyes get wide. our maintenance guy comes down and says a lot of very loud and very worried words, but reassures me that this hideous water at least didn't come from the toilet. just from a fifty year old sink pipe. he calls the plumber and the two of them spend a great deal of time banging and running down to the basement and yelling back and forth between floors. i tell them i'll do the cleaning up because, well, although our maintenance guy is good at building things, i suspect his bathroom looks like mine did when i was in college.
there is no food anywhere inside me but i figure that means there's no way any food could try to escape so i put on my hoodie (no mirrored glasses) and head out into the world to get more paper towels (we used a whole roll and two bath towels to mop up some of the water in the bathroom). against my better judgement, i buy a bleach cleaner. i pick up guthrie from daycare and as we are walking home, i begin to shake. i can barely lift my legs to walk. my stomach begins to cramp because there are no things in there to keep its walls from clanging into each other. i try to get guthrie to carry me home but he just looks blankly and trots ahead.
i get home and start the oven. i go to the opposite end of the aparment and spray the bleach cleaner all over the sink. i open the window. i begin to scrub. the world rocks back and forth, gently and everything smells like cool earth and swimming pool. i go back to the kitchen and get the whole grain bread ready to go in the oven. dry toast. mmmmm. i realize i can smell swimming pool in the kitchen. i open a window. i can taste swimming pool. i open the living room window and the bedroom window. wide. it is 34 degrees and the aparmtent smells like bleach and dry toast. i go back to the bathroom to scrub the walls (yes, the walls are covered with splatters of chocolaty dirtwater) but the dizziness is immediate and the bleach smell has a painful edge to it. no longer swimming pool. i think gas mask. the sweetie is working late and i wonder whether chlorine gas is heavy or light. probably heavy since it was used in battle. i pick up guthrie, sit back down. too dizzy to lift a small dog. i sit in the kitchen. toast is ready. i stare at it. it even looks cruel. i hate it. i decide to put a little olive oil on it and some cinnamon. i drizzle the oil, greeny yellow, onto the miserable toast and search for cinnamon. nigerian cayenne. nutmeg. coriander. cumin. chili powder. onion powder. ginger. sesame seeds. peppermint oil. no cinnamon. i am on the life raft. i see the ship, see its searchlight. i wave my hand. it keeps steaming past. misses me entirely. no cinnamon. i smash a whole banana onto the two pieces of olive oiled toast and sit down. it is beautiful. it is glorious. my bruised, aching stomach sings softly.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
insides go out, part 2
after yesterday's struggle with my insides trying to get out, i call my doctor. she's out of town and i make an appointment with an office-mate of hers. then this morning i wake up and my body immediately sets to work swirling and snarling and more or less letting me know i will not be leaving the environs of the toilet for any interval longer than fifteen minutes. so i cram in some immodium. and my insides laugh a sinister laugh. and then do some other things we'll not say here. so i cram in some more immodium. and by the time it is 8:20 am i have downed a full day's dose of immodium and my insides are twisted and gnarled and still very, very angry. this is a concern for a person with an appointment at 9:50am at a place about 45 minutes the other side of the nearest train.
i steel myself against the thought of the long train trip. when you take a train you often do not have any idea what's above you at the in between stops. bathrooms? at this hour? not likely. i comfort myself with the idea that i've actually seen people go to the bathroom on the train and so, if things go really badly, i will not be the first. still, not a goal to set. now, those of you who read regularly know i'm not what you'd call at peace with the train travel underground and most folks know that swirling insides + anxiety = no good. but i sit on the train and keep my paranoid face buried in my knitting and the immodium somehow seems to get the upper hand there for a while on the train. and we go slowly slowly slowly (track work today?) from station to station, agonizing trips where the train itself seems to groan in frustration. and still i am knitting away, baby bear pants, brown and cuddly. knit knit knit. we inch under the east river and i don't even notice, crawl through a hole in the ground under a river right where it slams into the ocean. who would put a hole in the ground there? and then shove people in it? but someone did and we go on through and everything is good.
but the warmer weather and the bright bright sun have worked together to create a new sort of subway passenger. i look up at a lower manhattan stop to see mirrored sunglasses and a dark hoodie, hood up, and a blank face. a face i've seen, you've seen, right in the newspaper. the unabomber steps through the doors and onto my train. and stands there over me, glaring eyelessly through those mirrored glasses. and i can feel the immodium slipping a little. losing the battle. my insides grow more and more pointy and unstable. this is unfair. but what is more unfair is that at every stop along the way a new one gets on. unabombers all over the place. i'm not even kidding. today all the white men between 25 and 55 in all of manhattan get a call: dude! wear your dark hoodie- blue or black or something. with the hood up. yeah! and get some cheap mirrored shades to wear. indoors, man! i know! do not take those bad boys off and do not take that hood down. this will be sooooo cool! and it seems that at least forty men on my subway line heed the call and prance out into the world all dressed up like a man who blows things up. this is not funny when you're on the same train car with a guy like this. not funny at all.
i soothe myself with the idea that i will have a target if i accidentally explode on the train, if my insides actually do manage to get out. but the five unabombers still riding in my car when i arrive at my stop survive, clean and ridiculous looking. i make it up to see the substitute doctor and she says "stomach virus". then she says "brat diet". now, i have to strain to hear what she is saying over the laughing of my brain and my stomach. diet, indeed. for those of you who don't know, it's bananas, rice, applesauce, toast. and nothing else. but water. no butter. no salt. no juice. no protien. for a "few" days, until my stomach feels better and is up to digesting. it's like bed rest for the g.i. tract.
there are few things i love as much as food- cheese. chocolate. cheese with chocolate. did i mention this diet doesn't allow for any butter? that means dry toast and plain white rice. i go to the store, trying to convince myself that this will stop the swirling and make the bruised feeling my insides have go away. the truth is, it will not. it is just supposed to make things easier while the stomach wrestles with its viral foe. so i buy bananas. i buy bread (turns out whole grain is the wrong kind). i can find nothing applesaucy in the store and i was warned against the deadliness of juices, especially the dreaded apple juice. i get a carton of fat-free organic, low-sodium chicken broth to go with some rice at home and then i trudge back to the train.
i steel myself against the thought of the long train trip. when you take a train you often do not have any idea what's above you at the in between stops. bathrooms? at this hour? not likely. i comfort myself with the idea that i've actually seen people go to the bathroom on the train and so, if things go really badly, i will not be the first. still, not a goal to set. now, those of you who read regularly know i'm not what you'd call at peace with the train travel underground and most folks know that swirling insides + anxiety = no good. but i sit on the train and keep my paranoid face buried in my knitting and the immodium somehow seems to get the upper hand there for a while on the train. and we go slowly slowly slowly (track work today?) from station to station, agonizing trips where the train itself seems to groan in frustration. and still i am knitting away, baby bear pants, brown and cuddly. knit knit knit. we inch under the east river and i don't even notice, crawl through a hole in the ground under a river right where it slams into the ocean. who would put a hole in the ground there? and then shove people in it? but someone did and we go on through and everything is good.
but the warmer weather and the bright bright sun have worked together to create a new sort of subway passenger. i look up at a lower manhattan stop to see mirrored sunglasses and a dark hoodie, hood up, and a blank face. a face i've seen, you've seen, right in the newspaper. the unabomber steps through the doors and onto my train. and stands there over me, glaring eyelessly through those mirrored glasses. and i can feel the immodium slipping a little. losing the battle. my insides grow more and more pointy and unstable. this is unfair. but what is more unfair is that at every stop along the way a new one gets on. unabombers all over the place. i'm not even kidding. today all the white men between 25 and 55 in all of manhattan get a call: dude! wear your dark hoodie- blue or black or something. with the hood up. yeah! and get some cheap mirrored shades to wear. indoors, man! i know! do not take those bad boys off and do not take that hood down. this will be sooooo cool! and it seems that at least forty men on my subway line heed the call and prance out into the world all dressed up like a man who blows things up. this is not funny when you're on the same train car with a guy like this. not funny at all.
i soothe myself with the idea that i will have a target if i accidentally explode on the train, if my insides actually do manage to get out. but the five unabombers still riding in my car when i arrive at my stop survive, clean and ridiculous looking. i make it up to see the substitute doctor and she says "stomach virus". then she says "brat diet". now, i have to strain to hear what she is saying over the laughing of my brain and my stomach. diet, indeed. for those of you who don't know, it's bananas, rice, applesauce, toast. and nothing else. but water. no butter. no salt. no juice. no protien. for a "few" days, until my stomach feels better and is up to digesting. it's like bed rest for the g.i. tract.
there are few things i love as much as food- cheese. chocolate. cheese with chocolate. did i mention this diet doesn't allow for any butter? that means dry toast and plain white rice. i go to the store, trying to convince myself that this will stop the swirling and make the bruised feeling my insides have go away. the truth is, it will not. it is just supposed to make things easier while the stomach wrestles with its viral foe. so i buy bananas. i buy bread (turns out whole grain is the wrong kind). i can find nothing applesaucy in the store and i was warned against the deadliness of juices, especially the dreaded apple juice. i get a carton of fat-free organic, low-sodium chicken broth to go with some rice at home and then i trudge back to the train.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
insides go out, part 1
when i leave school today i figure i"ll give myself the gift of getting home in fifteen minutes instead of the thirty minutes on the bus with screaming kids and then the additional thirty minutes on the train (which got stuck in the tunnel twice this morning, by the way) adding up to a big, fat, stinking hour. because i am sick and i figure getting home quicker reduces my chances of crapping myself publicly. and honestly, don't we all want to reduce our chances of crapping ourselves publicly?
so i get myself over to bay parkway to a little car service with giant russian guys who smoke cigars. this is where i go when i'm feeling icky and don't want to feel sick for an hour with an audience. usually i get this one russian guy who is not really russian at all and who sounds like what dracula would sound like in a round man's body. he is really nice and plays music from my youth. early u2. violent femmes. quiet guy. charges $14 for the trip. but not today. today i get an angry man who stomps out to the car and asks me three times what i mean by 8th avenue and 8th street. his version of the same route is $18 and on any other day i'd argue but i feel like crap so i get in. he drives away and this horrible dinging starts up. it takes me a while to realize that his car screams an alarm at two minute intervals. eleven horrible banging, shrieking beeps in sequence when the driver doesn't have the seat belt fastened. i figure he probably knows this because it is his car and all, and figure he'll pull the shoulder belt down at some point before i crawl over the seat and fasten it for him.
i am shockingly wrong. in what turns out to be a twenty five minute car ride he does not fasten his seat belt at all and this means, of course, that a horrible sound like our school bell blares through the car thirteen times, eleven rings each time. afte the fifth one i consider ramming one of my knitting needles through his skull but they're bamboo and probably wouldn't get through. i consider taking out an eye or puncturing an ear. feeling generally sick, fearing an ugly crapping incident and being assaulted by raging bells and awful russian pop music all at the same time can make a person aggressive to the point of actual violence. but these particular needles are the only size nines i have and i will be needing them to finish the little bear cub pants i'm making for my nephew. so the cab driver survives. but just barely. because all the while there's the alarm howling and my stomach swirling and storming and the man is on the phone to a woman. i know this because i can hear her voice the same way i can hear lester flatt and earl scruggs singing on my big console radio right now. because i have it cranked up to "hell, yeah! it's bluegrass!" and that's what this driver does. cranks up the banshee on the phone so i can hear both sides of the conversation i don't want to hear in the first place. i can tell you a few things.
1. the conversation is in russian.
2. both parties are very, very, very angry.
3. evidently the woman is as stupid as the driver because the driver keeps yelling the same phrases at her. five times. six times.
4. he cranks up some awful russian pop music, which takes all the worst of american pop music and adds to it a whining tone, nearly bleating, that concentrates my urge to kill or possibly crap all over the seat of this car in fear or rage. like how frogs pee when you pick them up.
5. the screaming conversation (so loud it actually drowns out one instance of the alarm alarming) lasts from the time we turn onto bay parkway to the time we turn off the prospect expressway onto 8th avenue. more than twenty of the twenty five minutes i am on this magic carpet ride.
so then the man asks me, again, again, where to stop. and i say, again, again, 8th avenue and 8th street. and he wants to know why. this strikes me as a bit odd and i start thinking about making eye contact with folks on the sidewalk. i tell him i'm going to the pharmacy on the corner there (this is true, actually, though none of his business) and he says, "well, where do you live?" i say, vaguely, that i live up the street a few blocks and am stopping at the pharmacy because that's where i want to go and that's where i asked to be let out when i got in the car. he says, "well, i could wait for you." what? WHAT? why would he wait for me? so i explain again, no. nonono. i want to get out at 8th and 8th. right in front of the pharmacy. he counts the streets out loud. twelfth. eleventh. tenth. i'm not kidding. every street. ninth. and between ninth street and eighth street he starts yelling, "what pharmacy? i don't see it? where?" so i point out the window at the pharmacy, which is right there on the corner of 8th and 8th, right where i said it would be. near side. right side. there is a painted picture on one window of a pharmacist holding a little boy's nose and shoving a spoonful of medicine in the mouth the child opened for breathing while a very smug little sister looks on. and the stupid alarm for the seat belt goes off one more time as this man unlocks the car doors. he says thank you all syrupy and tells me to get out on the side near the curb so i'll be safe. i peel off a ten. a five. and three singles. no tip. i am all about tipping. and i had tip money. but not for this guy and his horrible screaming and yelling and his neverending alarm and ugly russian pop music.
i walk out of the car and into the tiny two-aisle pharmacy where the guy behind the counter says, "picking up, right?" he remembers my name. and i nod. in the background, just audible, is "sylvia's mother", a song that seemed to me, when i was a child, so heartbreaking i couldn't even think while it played. the saddest, lostest song ever. and the pharmacist looks up and, while putting my pills in a little bag, says, "no dog today?" because he and guthrie have met. i promise to bring him by next time and the guy behind the counter and the pharmacist laugh and smile and tell me to have a good evening and i feel like i have arrived home after walking a great distance through a particularly ugly storm.
so i get myself over to bay parkway to a little car service with giant russian guys who smoke cigars. this is where i go when i'm feeling icky and don't want to feel sick for an hour with an audience. usually i get this one russian guy who is not really russian at all and who sounds like what dracula would sound like in a round man's body. he is really nice and plays music from my youth. early u2. violent femmes. quiet guy. charges $14 for the trip. but not today. today i get an angry man who stomps out to the car and asks me three times what i mean by 8th avenue and 8th street. his version of the same route is $18 and on any other day i'd argue but i feel like crap so i get in. he drives away and this horrible dinging starts up. it takes me a while to realize that his car screams an alarm at two minute intervals. eleven horrible banging, shrieking beeps in sequence when the driver doesn't have the seat belt fastened. i figure he probably knows this because it is his car and all, and figure he'll pull the shoulder belt down at some point before i crawl over the seat and fasten it for him.
i am shockingly wrong. in what turns out to be a twenty five minute car ride he does not fasten his seat belt at all and this means, of course, that a horrible sound like our school bell blares through the car thirteen times, eleven rings each time. afte the fifth one i consider ramming one of my knitting needles through his skull but they're bamboo and probably wouldn't get through. i consider taking out an eye or puncturing an ear. feeling generally sick, fearing an ugly crapping incident and being assaulted by raging bells and awful russian pop music all at the same time can make a person aggressive to the point of actual violence. but these particular needles are the only size nines i have and i will be needing them to finish the little bear cub pants i'm making for my nephew. so the cab driver survives. but just barely. because all the while there's the alarm howling and my stomach swirling and storming and the man is on the phone to a woman. i know this because i can hear her voice the same way i can hear lester flatt and earl scruggs singing on my big console radio right now. because i have it cranked up to "hell, yeah! it's bluegrass!" and that's what this driver does. cranks up the banshee on the phone so i can hear both sides of the conversation i don't want to hear in the first place. i can tell you a few things.
1. the conversation is in russian.
2. both parties are very, very, very angry.
3. evidently the woman is as stupid as the driver because the driver keeps yelling the same phrases at her. five times. six times.
4. he cranks up some awful russian pop music, which takes all the worst of american pop music and adds to it a whining tone, nearly bleating, that concentrates my urge to kill or possibly crap all over the seat of this car in fear or rage. like how frogs pee when you pick them up.
5. the screaming conversation (so loud it actually drowns out one instance of the alarm alarming) lasts from the time we turn onto bay parkway to the time we turn off the prospect expressway onto 8th avenue. more than twenty of the twenty five minutes i am on this magic carpet ride.
so then the man asks me, again, again, where to stop. and i say, again, again, 8th avenue and 8th street. and he wants to know why. this strikes me as a bit odd and i start thinking about making eye contact with folks on the sidewalk. i tell him i'm going to the pharmacy on the corner there (this is true, actually, though none of his business) and he says, "well, where do you live?" i say, vaguely, that i live up the street a few blocks and am stopping at the pharmacy because that's where i want to go and that's where i asked to be let out when i got in the car. he says, "well, i could wait for you." what? WHAT? why would he wait for me? so i explain again, no. nonono. i want to get out at 8th and 8th. right in front of the pharmacy. he counts the streets out loud. twelfth. eleventh. tenth. i'm not kidding. every street. ninth. and between ninth street and eighth street he starts yelling, "what pharmacy? i don't see it? where?" so i point out the window at the pharmacy, which is right there on the corner of 8th and 8th, right where i said it would be. near side. right side. there is a painted picture on one window of a pharmacist holding a little boy's nose and shoving a spoonful of medicine in the mouth the child opened for breathing while a very smug little sister looks on. and the stupid alarm for the seat belt goes off one more time as this man unlocks the car doors. he says thank you all syrupy and tells me to get out on the side near the curb so i'll be safe. i peel off a ten. a five. and three singles. no tip. i am all about tipping. and i had tip money. but not for this guy and his horrible screaming and yelling and his neverending alarm and ugly russian pop music.
i walk out of the car and into the tiny two-aisle pharmacy where the guy behind the counter says, "picking up, right?" he remembers my name. and i nod. in the background, just audible, is "sylvia's mother", a song that seemed to me, when i was a child, so heartbreaking i couldn't even think while it played. the saddest, lostest song ever. and the pharmacist looks up and, while putting my pills in a little bag, says, "no dog today?" because he and guthrie have met. i promise to bring him by next time and the guy behind the counter and the pharmacist laugh and smile and tell me to have a good evening and i feel like i have arrived home after walking a great distance through a particularly ugly storm.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
tamales
the tamale lady is standing in front of the bank every morning when i walk by at 7am. the bank, like all other banks on 86th street in bensonhurst was built when banks were cathedrals, silent and ornate and smelling like elegance, where fancy ball point pens hung at the ends of beaded chains, just waiting for you to sign a check, a deposit slip. this particular bank is on the corner right where the elevated train spills morning folks out onto the sidewalk and although they all walk by her, none of them coming off the train ever stop to buy anything. i wonder about her choice, standing there next to the bank so early. who buys tamales at this hour?
next to her, wedged up against the bank, is one of those beat up push carts the old ladies use to mow down normal pedestrians. the steel kind less aggressive folks use for laundry or groceries. it is crammed with insulated boxes. i do not know for sure she keeps tamales in there. she could have anything in them. most of the ladies in the city sell sweets and little pastry sticks from carts and in harlem there was an old guy who sold flaky and savory pies from a little stand outside a favorite bar. but i want them to be tamales. and every day i walk by her on my way to school and i look at those insulated containers in her cart, wrapped up tight. every day i want to ask her about tamales but the possibility that she might say no keeps me walking past imagining instead.
then today there is a little crowd around her. a woman and three men stand right up next to her cart and one man leans in and speaks to her. he wears workboots and a dusty denim jacket and she laughs and nods and reaches a bare hand into the steam of the container, hauling up a beautiful tamale. she drops it into a square of foil and grabs another for the man, then wraps them up, twist, twist. they could have anything inside them, beef, pork, vegetables, cheese but it is likely they have pork inside, shredded and savory. now, i have never been a huge fan of pork much beyond bacon, but i have never had a bad tamale of any sort and the idea of strolling into work a little after seven am with a steaming tamale or two for breakfast makes me dizzy. i make a note to have tamale money ready for tomorrow.
next to her, wedged up against the bank, is one of those beat up push carts the old ladies use to mow down normal pedestrians. the steel kind less aggressive folks use for laundry or groceries. it is crammed with insulated boxes. i do not know for sure she keeps tamales in there. she could have anything in them. most of the ladies in the city sell sweets and little pastry sticks from carts and in harlem there was an old guy who sold flaky and savory pies from a little stand outside a favorite bar. but i want them to be tamales. and every day i walk by her on my way to school and i look at those insulated containers in her cart, wrapped up tight. every day i want to ask her about tamales but the possibility that she might say no keeps me walking past imagining instead.
then today there is a little crowd around her. a woman and three men stand right up next to her cart and one man leans in and speaks to her. he wears workboots and a dusty denim jacket and she laughs and nods and reaches a bare hand into the steam of the container, hauling up a beautiful tamale. she drops it into a square of foil and grabs another for the man, then wraps them up, twist, twist. they could have anything inside them, beef, pork, vegetables, cheese but it is likely they have pork inside, shredded and savory. now, i have never been a huge fan of pork much beyond bacon, but i have never had a bad tamale of any sort and the idea of strolling into work a little after seven am with a steaming tamale or two for breakfast makes me dizzy. i make a note to have tamale money ready for tomorrow.
Monday, January 18, 2010
flying boots
i am getting ready for a visit from the new supernatural nephew. this is not because he has called me and mentioned such a trip nor is it because he mentioned this trip to me while i was visiting 
in december. it is because his accomplice, his sidekick, a quiet boy he shares a babysitter with, packed up his bag the other day and when asked where he was going answered confidently that he was on his way to see the sweetie and me. now, this accomplice has never met me, never met the sweetie. he does not know us even a little, but he is willing to pack himself a bag and fly off to what i am sure he calls "the big city" on the word of his pal, the nephew. he has been told many things. some of them are probably even a little bit true. the city is, after all, very big and full of almost all things.
the nephew will get around to telling us he's coming, i'm sure. he will call early in the morning or sometime late at night when he thinks everyone else has gone to bed. his parents go to bed with the chickens, but there is a new member of the household, the youngest uncle, just starting college and living in a new country. he will not be asleep. the supernatural nephew thinks he knows plenty but he does not know the ways of boys who are in college and one of the things he will learn is that they are nocturnal animals. his uncle will hear the whispering but because he knows things the supernatural child does not know, he will let it pass. he will not tell the parents nor will he confront the child about late night phone calls. there is much the child does not yet know about his own instruction in supernaturalness, but his uncle is well aware. why do you think he is living there in that house, across the hall from the small child? protection. instruction. you didn't really think he came halfway across the world for school.
the uncle will pretend to be asleep and the child will call and will whisper to me about the trip, about how he and his hapless sidekick will be flying. and i will snarl about how they shouldn't fly alone, how they shouldn't fly in the dark or in bad weather and he will laugh softly, but for a long time. he has already built a little basket for carrying the sidekick (who does not yet know how to fly) and all their important things. a backpack for each. musical instruments. chocolate. there will be more arguing. the sweetie will turn over in his sleep and will ask who is calling. when i tell him, he will grab the phone from my hand and will ask in his not yet awake voice how much bacon the kid likes with breakfast. guthrie will kick in his sleep and the child on the other end of the line a thousand miles away will laugh again and promise a whole bunch of love to us all and will say, "see you tomorrow morning!" he will want lots of bacon.
and there will be nothing that can be done about that. he will arrive with his accomplice and we will be glad. he will fly through the latest, darkest, coldest part of the night on purpose because he is learning new things and he likes the challenge of putting them all together. i do not particularly like this sort of thing, but i do remember a time when i did, when i put myself in
places i shouldn't have because i wanted to see if i could figure out what to do. now, that doesn't mean he isn't going to hear about it from me. a child his age flying off into the middle of the night without really letting anyone know anything specific is not the sort of child you want to take responsibility for, not even temporarily and for a few days. but we will.
and when he comes down out of the sky and taps on the kitchen window (he will land on the fire escape just for the drama of it. he will never be satisfied with doing things the way others do them when there are more unusual options.) we will raise the window and the screen and will put a thick towel down on top of the radiator in front of the sill because if we don't, he will, in all his little boy excitement, scorch himself. you see, for all his knowledge of the world, he does not know radiators. the houses he spends his time in, his own, his cousin's, his grandparents', his babysitter's, all were built during my lifetime and do not have such unusual things. he will land in brooklyn with a shivering and sleepy child in a basket and he will have much to learn.
i can guarantee he will arrive around 5am and the sweetie, staggering and still asleep, will put a fire under a skillet and will start the bacon. i will get out the eggs and put on water for tea. the
supernatural child will take the butter tray from the fridge and will set it on the radiator to warm for the toast. everyone will have a glass of milk with a little vanilla in it. there will be eating and hugging and laughing, but there is a reason the child will visit. he has something in mind. when i was visiting him in december i made what will on this day of his arrival seem like the very reckless decision to show him my flying boots, let him use them enough that he could tell he wanted to know more. and he is happy to see the sweetie. he is happy to see the small dog curled up on the couch with his back feet twitching over his nose through a dream. he is happy to see me. but what he wants is a flying lesson. he has come to see the boots.
in december. it is because his accomplice, his sidekick, a quiet boy he shares a babysitter with, packed up his bag the other day and when asked where he was going answered confidently that he was on his way to see the sweetie and me. now, this accomplice has never met me, never met the sweetie. he does not know us even a little, but he is willing to pack himself a bag and fly off to what i am sure he calls "the big city" on the word of his pal, the nephew. he has been told many things. some of them are probably even a little bit true. the city is, after all, very big and full of almost all things.the nephew will get around to telling us he's coming, i'm sure. he will call early in the morning or sometime late at night when he thinks everyone else has gone to bed. his parents go to bed with the chickens, but there is a new member of the household, the youngest uncle, just starting college and living in a new country. he will not be asleep. the supernatural nephew thinks he knows plenty but he does not know the ways of boys who are in college and one of the things he will learn is that they are nocturnal animals. his uncle will hear the whispering but because he knows things the supernatural child does not know, he will let it pass. he will not tell the parents nor will he confront the child about late night phone calls. there is much the child does not yet know about his own instruction in supernaturalness, but his uncle is well aware. why do you think he is living there in that house, across the hall from the small child? protection. instruction. you didn't really think he came halfway across the world for school.
the uncle will pretend to be asleep and the child will call and will whisper to me about the trip, about how he and his hapless sidekick will be flying. and i will snarl about how they shouldn't fly alone, how they shouldn't fly in the dark or in bad weather and he will laugh softly, but for a long time. he has already built a little basket for carrying the sidekick (who does not yet know how to fly) and all their important things. a backpack for each. musical instruments. chocolate. there will be more arguing. the sweetie will turn over in his sleep and will ask who is calling. when i tell him, he will grab the phone from my hand and will ask in his not yet awake voice how much bacon the kid likes with breakfast. guthrie will kick in his sleep and the child on the other end of the line a thousand miles away will laugh again and promise a whole bunch of love to us all and will say, "see you tomorrow morning!" he will want lots of bacon.
and there will be nothing that can be done about that. he will arrive with his accomplice and we will be glad. he will fly through the latest, darkest, coldest part of the night on purpose because he is learning new things and he likes the challenge of putting them all together. i do not particularly like this sort of thing, but i do remember a time when i did, when i put myself in
places i shouldn't have because i wanted to see if i could figure out what to do. now, that doesn't mean he isn't going to hear about it from me. a child his age flying off into the middle of the night without really letting anyone know anything specific is not the sort of child you want to take responsibility for, not even temporarily and for a few days. but we will.and when he comes down out of the sky and taps on the kitchen window (he will land on the fire escape just for the drama of it. he will never be satisfied with doing things the way others do them when there are more unusual options.) we will raise the window and the screen and will put a thick towel down on top of the radiator in front of the sill because if we don't, he will, in all his little boy excitement, scorch himself. you see, for all his knowledge of the world, he does not know radiators. the houses he spends his time in, his own, his cousin's, his grandparents', his babysitter's, all were built during my lifetime and do not have such unusual things. he will land in brooklyn with a shivering and sleepy child in a basket and he will have much to learn.
i can guarantee he will arrive around 5am and the sweetie, staggering and still asleep, will put a fire under a skillet and will start the bacon. i will get out the eggs and put on water for tea. the
supernatural child will take the butter tray from the fridge and will set it on the radiator to warm for the toast. everyone will have a glass of milk with a little vanilla in it. there will be eating and hugging and laughing, but there is a reason the child will visit. he has something in mind. when i was visiting him in december i made what will on this day of his arrival seem like the very reckless decision to show him my flying boots, let him use them enough that he could tell he wanted to know more. and he is happy to see the sweetie. he is happy to see the small dog curled up on the couch with his back feet twitching over his nose through a dream. he is happy to see me. but what he wants is a flying lesson. he has come to see the boots.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
predator
Helpful hint: You might want to click on the death roll photo to check out guthrie's face.
i have mentioned guthrie's dearly departed crackle skunk in other entries. he mourned it so much we found him a new crackle toy and it immediately became his beloved. but dog toys, especially canvas ones, disgustify fairly quickly and his second crackle paper went to join the first and the crackle skunk in dog toy heaven. he has been making do but has obviously been suffering crippling emotional pain. and if you've never seen an emotionally wounded dog, let me tell you. it will ruin your heart.
then today on our afternoon walk, guthrie and i stopped by the dog store. you see, in our new apartment we have this thing we've never had in and apartment in winter before. not ever in guthrie's whole little dog life. heat. lots of it. so much heat that we use two tiny radiators to heat our whole apartment and still keep two windows open. now, guthrie is not used to all this heat and the dryness that strolled into his life right along with it. he's become scaly. his skin gets so upset it comes right up through his fur, lizardy and cracked. so i was headed in for some dog emollient but guthrie had other plans. he went right over to the dead animal section.
that's right. go into any pet store around and you'll find a little section of soft, fake animals
without any insides. just a squeaker in the head and another in the tail. all sizes. i found a badger the same size as guthrie and showed it to him. he is, after all, a badger hound. he glared at it, glared at me. i showed him the raccooon, something he could have worn as a coat. he looked insulted. he jumped up and whimpered for the small skunk right next to it. i picked it up and he jumped high enough to rip the limp creature right out of my hands. i figured he wanted a smaller animal to carry so i handed over the small badger. badger hound. he actually turned away from the brown clump of fur. so i picked up the skunk again and held it out. he grabbed it and ran to the front of the store where he dropped it next to the cash register.
we waited in line behind a woman ordering a tag for her own dog. she could not spell the name, a name involving real and actual already established words which the clerk had written down properly. "no," she insisted. "like minnie mouse. miny. miney. yeah!" she glanced down at guthrie, all stripey sweater and stripey skunk, glaring up at her. "that dog is so cute!" she said, louder than she needed to since we were standing right there. guthrie continued to stare. "what is he? a greyhound?" i looked at her a minute and the clerk stopped writing and looked at her the same way. "he's a dachshund," i said as the clerk went back to misspelling minnie the way the woman told her to. "huh," she said. "not a greyhound." i smiled. she had too much confusion for me to add any to it. we left her to her dog tag.
now, guthrie is pretty particular. he loves crackle. he loves skunk. not badger. not raccoon. only skunk. so i got the skunk and i got the dog lotion and the clerk put them in a bag. when i opened the door, guthrie sailed past like those dolphins at sea world, graceful arc of lean animal, and snatched the whole bag to the ground. so i pulled the stickers and tag off the skunk and held it out to what had become a raving wild beast. he grabbed it by the neck and trotted off down the street.
for those of you who don't know, these little soft lifeless skunks look like real live actual dead small animals. and guthrie walked in the late afternoon getting-dark part of the day with the tail end of a skunk hanging out the left side of his jaws and the drooping head and baby animal front legs hanging out the right side. plenty of folks cringed as they passed, thinking he really had a carcass in his long snap-jaws, but one woman walked up and yelled, "hey, dog, you got you a skunk!" and she laughed as she walked past.
when we got upstairs, we took off our sweaters and guthrie settled down with his victim. i don't
know what you know about alligators, but when they catch their own prey they do what's called a death roll. this is to render a very large snack helpless and also break off a few bite-sized pieces. you are probably already realizing guthrie and his own kind have a similar behavior. he pinned his baby skunk to the ground, bit all around the head until he found just the right place where his jaws closed tight around its neck. and he shook it like a tiny tornado.
the skunk is sitting now on the bottom shelf of the freezer where all guthrie's toys live. he has spent the last 47 minutes crying in front of the fridge. i have offered him his old toy. i have offered him dog candy. he is inconsolable. he is heartbroken. there is a fake dead skunk in the freezer and it is his. he will not rest.
i have mentioned guthrie's dearly departed crackle skunk in other entries. he mourned it so much we found him a new crackle toy and it immediately became his beloved. but dog toys, especially canvas ones, disgustify fairly quickly and his second crackle paper went to join the first and the crackle skunk in dog toy heaven. he has been making do but has obviously been suffering crippling emotional pain. and if you've never seen an emotionally wounded dog, let me tell you. it will ruin your heart.
then today on our afternoon walk, guthrie and i stopped by the dog store. you see, in our new apartment we have this thing we've never had in and apartment in winter before. not ever in guthrie's whole little dog life. heat. lots of it. so much heat that we use two tiny radiators to heat our whole apartment and still keep two windows open. now, guthrie is not used to all this heat and the dryness that strolled into his life right along with it. he's become scaly. his skin gets so upset it comes right up through his fur, lizardy and cracked. so i was headed in for some dog emollient but guthrie had other plans. he went right over to the dead animal section.
that's right. go into any pet store around and you'll find a little section of soft, fake animals
without any insides. just a squeaker in the head and another in the tail. all sizes. i found a badger the same size as guthrie and showed it to him. he is, after all, a badger hound. he glared at it, glared at me. i showed him the raccooon, something he could have worn as a coat. he looked insulted. he jumped up and whimpered for the small skunk right next to it. i picked it up and he jumped high enough to rip the limp creature right out of my hands. i figured he wanted a smaller animal to carry so i handed over the small badger. badger hound. he actually turned away from the brown clump of fur. so i picked up the skunk again and held it out. he grabbed it and ran to the front of the store where he dropped it next to the cash register.we waited in line behind a woman ordering a tag for her own dog. she could not spell the name, a name involving real and actual already established words which the clerk had written down properly. "no," she insisted. "like minnie mouse. miny. miney. yeah!" she glanced down at guthrie, all stripey sweater and stripey skunk, glaring up at her. "that dog is so cute!" she said, louder than she needed to since we were standing right there. guthrie continued to stare. "what is he? a greyhound?" i looked at her a minute and the clerk stopped writing and looked at her the same way. "he's a dachshund," i said as the clerk went back to misspelling minnie the way the woman told her to. "huh," she said. "not a greyhound." i smiled. she had too much confusion for me to add any to it. we left her to her dog tag.
now, guthrie is pretty particular. he loves crackle. he loves skunk. not badger. not raccoon. only skunk. so i got the skunk and i got the dog lotion and the clerk put them in a bag. when i opened the door, guthrie sailed past like those dolphins at sea world, graceful arc of lean animal, and snatched the whole bag to the ground. so i pulled the stickers and tag off the skunk and held it out to what had become a raving wild beast. he grabbed it by the neck and trotted off down the street.for those of you who don't know, these little soft lifeless skunks look like real live actual dead small animals. and guthrie walked in the late afternoon getting-dark part of the day with the tail end of a skunk hanging out the left side of his jaws and the drooping head and baby animal front legs hanging out the right side. plenty of folks cringed as they passed, thinking he really had a carcass in his long snap-jaws, but one woman walked up and yelled, "hey, dog, you got you a skunk!" and she laughed as she walked past.
when we got upstairs, we took off our sweaters and guthrie settled down with his victim. i don't
know what you know about alligators, but when they catch their own prey they do what's called a death roll. this is to render a very large snack helpless and also break off a few bite-sized pieces. you are probably already realizing guthrie and his own kind have a similar behavior. he pinned his baby skunk to the ground, bit all around the head until he found just the right place where his jaws closed tight around its neck. and he shook it like a tiny tornado.the skunk is sitting now on the bottom shelf of the freezer where all guthrie's toys live. he has spent the last 47 minutes crying in front of the fridge. i have offered him his old toy. i have offered him dog candy. he is inconsolable. he is heartbroken. there is a fake dead skunk in the freezer and it is his. he will not rest.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
old money
after a week and a half of cross-country adventure, the sweetie and i dragged our tired selves, our overstuffed bags and the small brown dog through nineteen degrees and 25 mph wind gusts, over three blocks and up two flights of stairs to home. now, when you've been gone a while and are getting in around mealtime (that's 8pm for those of you in the midwest) you don't have too many options. there's nothing in the fridge that should be used for anything but a science experiment. the pantry has plenty of boxes and cans, none of which can be combined with any of the others in what might be called a meaningful way. the obvious thing to do when you live in brooklyn is order pizza. but if you have come home with only a few dollars in your pocket and all the rest of your cash resting comfortably in an atm, you are faced with going back down two flights of stairs and over several blocks through wind and plummeting temeperatures to an atm and then food. or you can starve to death.
i was contemplating the prospect of just this sort of death while putting away all the things i'd dragged to missouri and then upstate and finally back home. i picked up a necklace to put in a heart shaped tin on my bedside table. the tin is unpainted and bruised and packed near to the top with buttons of every sort. i'm not much of a jewelry wearer so the only necklace i currently own went to sleep with the buttons. but when i opened the tin, two bills lay quietly on a bed of buttons. a ten and a twenty. more than enough to bring hot pizza through the cold night up the stairs and to our door. i called to the sweetie, exclaiming over this post-new year's day miracle and then put the bills on the kitchen table. the sweetie called in our order and we sat back to wait for our slices of heaven.
the sweetie looked at the clock and headed to the kitchen to pick up the money. "this is 1950s money!" he moaned. now, first you ought to know that 1950s money spends just the same as any other money. but the sweetie had come home with these bills among his change a while back and we'd both been smitten by the crispness and darkness of them. they looked ancient and somehow important and we had stowed them in the tin, assuming it would be obvious from their place there how important they were. and although we certainly could have traded them for pizza, neither of us considered it for a second. we scrambled frantically for bills wadded in pockets, stowed in the bottoms of bags, hidden under stacks of paper. i found a five i'd accidentally ripped in half last month and pawed around for tape to fix it. i handed over the mended five and we stood there in the kitchen, the sweetie counting up small bills while i eyed the change jar. a few bucks short. the sweetie shook his head. no way we could pay a delivery guy with quarters. no way. i nodded. "it's okay," i said. "we can spend the ten and we'll still have the twenty." the sweetie frowned but didn't say a word as i began counting out quarters into a pile on the table. the delivery guy traded a pizza and two liters of soda for a bunch of singles, a taped up five and twenty quarters.
we ate our pizza on the couch while watching a show about the punkin chunkin on the science channel. when we finished i took the dishes into the kitchen. then i took the 1950s money, folded it in half the way i'd found it and put in in the heart shaped tin between the layer of buttons and the layer of necklace. there are times i've questioned the rightness of my choices. but i have managed to hitch myself up to a man whose desire to keep this ridiculous money is exactly, inexplicably, the same as my own. how can anyone question something like that?
i was contemplating the prospect of just this sort of death while putting away all the things i'd dragged to missouri and then upstate and finally back home. i picked up a necklace to put in a heart shaped tin on my bedside table. the tin is unpainted and bruised and packed near to the top with buttons of every sort. i'm not much of a jewelry wearer so the only necklace i currently own went to sleep with the buttons. but when i opened the tin, two bills lay quietly on a bed of buttons. a ten and a twenty. more than enough to bring hot pizza through the cold night up the stairs and to our door. i called to the sweetie, exclaiming over this post-new year's day miracle and then put the bills on the kitchen table. the sweetie called in our order and we sat back to wait for our slices of heaven.
the sweetie looked at the clock and headed to the kitchen to pick up the money. "this is 1950s money!" he moaned. now, first you ought to know that 1950s money spends just the same as any other money. but the sweetie had come home with these bills among his change a while back and we'd both been smitten by the crispness and darkness of them. they looked ancient and somehow important and we had stowed them in the tin, assuming it would be obvious from their place there how important they were. and although we certainly could have traded them for pizza, neither of us considered it for a second. we scrambled frantically for bills wadded in pockets, stowed in the bottoms of bags, hidden under stacks of paper. i found a five i'd accidentally ripped in half last month and pawed around for tape to fix it. i handed over the mended five and we stood there in the kitchen, the sweetie counting up small bills while i eyed the change jar. a few bucks short. the sweetie shook his head. no way we could pay a delivery guy with quarters. no way. i nodded. "it's okay," i said. "we can spend the ten and we'll still have the twenty." the sweetie frowned but didn't say a word as i began counting out quarters into a pile on the table. the delivery guy traded a pizza and two liters of soda for a bunch of singles, a taped up five and twenty quarters.
we ate our pizza on the couch while watching a show about the punkin chunkin on the science channel. when we finished i took the dishes into the kitchen. then i took the 1950s money, folded it in half the way i'd found it and put in in the heart shaped tin between the layer of buttons and the layer of necklace. there are times i've questioned the rightness of my choices. but i have managed to hitch myself up to a man whose desire to keep this ridiculous money is exactly, inexplicably, the same as my own. how can anyone question something like that?
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